ELECTIONS 2006; Final Tug at Voters, via Their Pocketbooks

By DAVID W. CHEN

Published: November 7, 2006

It was the last center for the elderly on the last day before the election, the last time that he would steer his stump speech especially for the Social Security set.

But when he delivered what may be his best line -- one that elicited a noticeable smile and laugh from former President Bill Clinton on Sunday -- Senator Robert Menendez changed it ever so slightly.

Mr. Menendez always gets big laughs and throaty guffaws after asking the audience if anyone has made $300,000 a year. But at the Elmwood Park Senior Center here on Monday, Mr. Menendez fudged the number.

''How many of you made a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year when you were working?'' he began.

Chuckles, all around.

''I'm looking for a hand because I can still get a contribution if you did.''

More laughs. But not one hand.

''Well, that's the problem,'' Mr. Menendez said. ''That's where most New Jerseyans are at. They've worked hard all of their life, but they never made that much money a year.''

''That's not where most middle-class and working families are at. But that's where the president's tax cuts are geared to,'' he continued.

''That's why my opponent wants to make those tax cuts permanent: He only paid 4 percent in federal taxes last year. Most of us as families pay 15 to 20 percent in federal taxes. But when you get that income and you get it through dividends and capital gains instead of working and earning your income, that's the result.''

In ways that are clearer on the stump than in his television commercials, Mr. Menendez plays up the differences in wealth and class of his opponent, State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr. He talks about kitchen-table conversation items like Social Security and Medicare in hopes of appealing to older voters on fixed incomes in working-class towns.

''How is it when you come from great wealth -- which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that privilege -- how is it that you can't understand that others who work hard should be able to live with dignity as well?'' he asked the group over the lunch hour.

''How is it that you could have stood with the president last year when he came to New Jersey, and stood in Westfield, my opponent's hometown, and said, 'I want to privatize Social Security.' ''

Those words worked like magic with the 50 or so people here, as they have at other centers for the elderly. (Nine in the last four days, for those keeping score.)

''The blue-collar workers are more in touch with Menendez,'' said Joan Dambra, a 68-year-old real estate broker, who wore a Menendez sticker, like her sister-in-law, Mary Thornton, 81.

As for Mr. Kean, she said, ''I don't think he can relate to the guy who has to get up at 4 in the morning to go to a plumbing job.''

Photo: Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey campaigned at the PATH station in Hoboken yesterday. (Photo by James Estrin/The New York Times)